If you use Yahoo Games, read this.

When you play chess on Yahoo Games you can email yourself the match recorded. Unfortunately it is not in pgn format. Here is a vbscript program that translates it into pgn format if you follow these guidelines carefully.

(1) Store the file from Yahoo Games with the moves only in C:\game.txt. An example file.
(2) Store the vbs program as C:\p2.vbs.
(3) Run the vbs program from the command prompt at C:\. Type cscript p2.vbs and press Enter.
(4) The pgn file is created as C:\game.pgn.
(5) You have to manually edit the file C:\game.pgn a little bit. Use Notepad or a similar text editor.
(a) If there was a pawn promotion Yahoo Games does not indicate what the pawn promoted to. The program adds =Q by default so e.g. a7-a8 becomes a7-a8=Q. Replace =Q with =R, =N, =B if another piece was chosen.
(b) The program puts the result at the end as 1-0 by default. Change that to 1/2-1/2 or 0-1 if needed.
(c) Replace the default player information etc at the top.

If you find the above procedure for translating Yahoo Games records of games to pgn too complicated, here is a javascript version. Copy the Yahoo Games records to the left box (an example file), click Translate, and the translation appears in the right window. Point 5 in the guidelines above still applies. Edit in the right box before you copy and paste it to Notepad and save it with a pgn extension.

Email me at jannordgreen at gmail dot com if you have any questions.

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